Audrey Young: Foreshore compromise unlikely

Iwi leaders arrive at Parliament this morning. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Opinion

Maori party co-leader Pita Sharples said this morning that the issue of putting the foreshore and seabed into"public domain" is not the primary concern of the iwi leadership group.

He said it was the threshold for iwi and hapu to make a claim for customary title.

That makes a compromise unlikely.

Dr Sharples, co-leader Tariana Turia and seven members of the iwi leadership group are meeting Prime Minister John Key and Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson in the Beehive before the cabinet meeting, which has been delayed.

Cabinet is due to consider the Government's final position on repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004.

Under the proposal, National has relaxed the threshold for claiming customary title but the iwi leaders want it relaxed even further.

The previous requirement was that an iwi must have exclusive use and occupation of a coastal area and continuous title of adjoining, or contiguous, land - though a claim was never actually made in a New Zealand court.

National proposes to remove the requirement to have continuous title to contiguous land.

That would allow coastal tribes who had land confiscated to claim customary title if they had continued to use the foreshore exclusively.

But the iwi leaders want to have a clause that says no tribe would be disadvantaged by dint of a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi. That would introduce as much lower threshold and greater debate about what was and wasn't a breach of the treaty.

It could, for example, require judgments about whether a tribe had been paid too little for a piece of land in the 1800s.

It is difficult to imagine the Government accepting such a low threshold, that would open up greater tracts of coastal area to claims for customary title.

Prime Minister John Key this morning reiterated his view that the proposed regime would result in small numbers of the coast being in customary title.